


Blue Child

by bold_seer



Category: The Chaconne - Dessa (Song)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: If you weremywife -
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Robot Rainbow 2020





	Blue Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



An overcast, expectant day turns into a heavy night. The violinist stirs, moves between his dreams and the storm. He awakes to thunder.

For an awful moment, he doesn’t _remember_. Which pieces go together. His own name (others remember it for him). How to make a sound. How the bow and the strings, the instrument and his hands belong. A construction with only leftover parts.  


Outside, a flash. Inside, another. His wife. The woman. With each other. Instead of _his_ , they were lovers. But his wife is dead and the woman is gone. His bed is empty.

He’ll play, compose even in the candlelight, and the music will calm his nerves. Let him find his focus again. In the past, those drowsy days and frantic nights, it’s been hard to think of anything but music. Of anything that doesn’t begin with a _c_. His child, perhaps - he grabs the ink, makes a line - but the violinist has created a world with his compositions at the centre: his concertos and the chaconne.

Her -

~~conjugal chamber,~~

~~the cough and coffin~~

He looks down at the paper. Words struck through, not what he meant to write. His heart goes faster, to an erratic rhythm, skips and adds beats at random. He looks to his violin and the bow, imagines that B flat -

~~his bride,~~

~~they buried her body~~

The violinist touches his lip. A few droplets of blood fall onto the paper, as scattered, meaningless notes.

**  


At the witching hour, the woman is awake. The wife lies with her head on her lap, legs dangling. She has a name - _had_ a name - and so does the woman. But all the women in the violinist’s life are that - women. Reduced to their gender, the parts they play in his presence. Replaced by another, moving from a note, a bar, a sheet of paper to the next. No hesitance. No thought of the blank space in the corner of his compositions. They must narrate their own lives.

 ~~The woman~~ \- the _narrator_ \- runs her fingers over her neck - no pulse. Over clavichord clavicles, then from the bones to the breasts, partly uncovered. _If you were_ my _wife -_

“He starved me. Of affection.” The dead, with no reason to be dutiful, are often angry or confused. Never content. “He’s still alive. When I’m - I want to see _my_ child.”

“Hush. You’re here.” Her thighs are cold to touch. “Alive in the music. In the creation.”

“He’ll play,” says the wife, but the last _l_ , soft on her tongue, disappears, becomes something else.


End file.
